Photo essay: We feed the world

We Feed the World is a global photographic project that aims to showcase the success and diversity of small scale family farmers in providing 70 percent of the world’s food.

Through a series of beautifully shot images and their accompanying stories, the project joins the dots between global issues and their impact on our food systems, from climate change, to the loss of biodiversity to the devastating effect of the extractive industries.

Led by the Gaia Foundation, the project brings together an international team of over 40 world-renowned photographers, NGO’s and civil society groups with the aim of reaching out to a mainstream audience and debunking the myth that we need an industrial food system or quick fix technologies like GM to feed a growing global population.

We Feed the World, has given Farming Matters a preview of the work, which will be launched in London in March 2018, before touring a number of international locations. The images capture 50 extraordinary communities, across six continents, who are using an array of agroecological methods to produce food. Here, we present four case studies, from four different continents, of climate-resilient food systems that are successful in finding creative solutions to deal with changing weather patterns and other social and political threats.

The Gaia Foundation is working with La Via Campesina, GRAIN, Groundswell International, Global Greengrants, Samdhana, the African Food Sovereignty Movement, the International Tree Foundation, Sahel Eco and communities around the world to produce the We Feed the World exhibition. They would welcome new partners and support from those working to promote agroecology.

Photo: Jordi Ruiz Cirera

Argentina

Now in their seventies, Remo and Irmina Kleiner look like an unlikely pair of revolutionaries, but these now doting grandparents spent over ten years on the run and were forced to give birth to two of their four children in the jungle, after speaking out about the rights of peasants in a dictator-led Argentina….Read more

Burkina Faso

Tindano Pabadou leads a women’s growing co-operative in the village of Bassieri, in the far east of Burkina Faso. The women here speak their minds and make decisions about how to share the harvest and spend the money it brings. Tindano has even paid for a new house for her family with the proceeds from her share of the co-operative….Read more

USA

Some years ago, Californian farmer, Mas Masumoto faced a life changing decision – the heritage peach trees his father had planted were still producing beautiful, juicy peaches but they weren’t the perfect looking red variety the supermarkets wanted….Read more

Indonesia

It took community leader Maria Loretta quite a bit of searching to even find the first sorghum seeds that have turned this 30 hectares of land in Likotuden into one of the most productive growing areas in East Flores….Read more